U.S. Campaign to Reform Kandahar is Rife with Pitfalls - David Ignatius, Washington Post opinion.
The coming battle for control of this ancient crossroads city will be the toughest challenge of the war in Afghanistan - not because it will be bloody, necessarily, but because it will require the hardest item for U.S. commanders to deliver, which is an improvement in governance.
Kandahar is the heartland of the Pashtun people - a place of competing tribes and clans, of hidden wealth accumulated from drug trafficking and smuggling, and of notorious power brokers symbolized in the public mind by Ahmed Wali Karzai, the leader of the provincial council and brother of Afghanistan's president.
Reforming the local government is like disassembling a pyramid of pick-up sticks. One wrong move and the whole pile collapses. Yet if the United States accommodates the existing power structure, it will appear to be condoning corruption here - a bad message for the public in Afghanistan and America alike...
More at The Washington Post.